


The life lessons of a poorly placed fellow and his companion that tried to comfort the poor boy but couldn't because goddammit he fled before the friend could utter a word

by Wordlesslywriting



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Hide Week 2017, Platonic Life Partners
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 15:25:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11129565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wordlesslywriting/pseuds/Wordlesslywriting
Summary: If there was anything Hide ever personally learned by the grips of life, it was to keep your friends close and your enemies the hell away from your friends.





	The life lessons of a poorly placed fellow and his companion that tried to comfort the poor boy but couldn't because goddammit he fled before the friend could utter a word

**Author's Note:**

> Brought to you by tumblr's event. Happy Hide WeeK!! I love my sunflower sunshine child. And his friendship with Kaneki.

Part of the problem that life has insisted was the necessary qualms of the need to always tell the truth or die lying in shame.

Of course it lead to enough debates and many inner monologues to see how diverse people were about their opinions. Some were insightful, others were better off living underneath a rock and forgotten. But for the record Nagachika Hideyoshi grew up to a world that loved to debate, thrash, and whine. It showed the viewpoint that humanity and other inhabitants that lived off the Earth’s resources had three common stages of what life presented to them. Birth, struggle and Death.

It wasn’t the most glamorous but it was straightforward enough. All so much easier to incite a young fellow to become more impressionable and fool around. To create mishaps and cry when the milk carton was spilled both figuratively and metaphorically. Hide on the other hand, saw it as an opportunity to bend the rules in calculated risks. Enough to benefit himself and whoever was wronged from the world. (Which was a lot of people the more he thought of it.) It was all a work in progress the way people, ghouls and, whatever was in between tried to survive. And it was something that made him well aware of the rules that the world imposed to its inhabitants.

There was enough people that grew up believing that nobody could live a whole life without stating a lie; saints were hard to come by after all. Most were fictional, others were too far stretched to believe fully. It was in the human condition to be imperfect. Now Hide wasn’t the most religious person out there; and neither were most of people he surrounded himself with. But Hide liked to believe that there were more than enough room to place faith high on his thinking ability. Without that kind of mentality then shit could have been worse. That was why he smiled when in doubt, laughed when the pain was overflowing too close for comfort and joked when the silence was deafening his lungs.

It wasn’t foul-proved; but it was better than letting the cold harsh world crashing his mood. Being pessimist wasn’t something that was ideal for his type of living. Wisdom came in all different packages and Hide saw that early on as ghouls were subjected to inequalities that were closely classified as inhumanly disposing what should have never been created in the first place. That was a tough pill to swallow. And it never got easier the way his interests started to tumble into his realities. Maybe it was a sick joke from God. Either way, Hide, himself chose to suck it up and deal with it.

Too bad he forgot who he was best friend’s with.

Because if he had the fortune of being able to manipulate time he would have done so the second he learned about Kaneki’s beginning (or technically middle) of huge misfortunes. It would have saved everyone’s asses if Hide had a list of people, ghouls, times and places to avoid or never utter out loud. It would have sold well in the black market in the wrong hands. So it was really a good thing that Hide pledged himself to live like a good citizen. Yet, that was how life totally didn’t dig Hide enough that it started fucking with him.

And it was so much fucking.

There was no consent, and it made Hide a little bitter the way it created a wall between what his life used to look like and how it was evaporating. He hated how he went every day that he could to visit his best friend in the hospital but was only to be greeted by defeat. It was annoying to go to each class in college and never have Kaneki there to greet him. He missed the way he had to horde the books away from Kaneki when it was movie nights, or make the stupid comments and have his best friend silently judge him while outwardly judging some more but with a politer undertone. He was getting lonelier with every passing second Kaneki didn’t want to see him.

It hurt a shit ton the way it looked like Kaneki didn’t want to Hide around. It was dumb to feel let down but Hide loved his best friend; he just wanted him to understand that shutting down on everything wasn’t healthy. Being a hypocrite himself Hide knew the faults of bottling everything. There was never a cure to living happily after the scars were laid on the surface. However, that didn’t mean that Kaneki had to shoot Hide in the heart the way he left him hanging. He knew about the anxiety and shyness of Kaneki; he was the wallflower that Hide needed to protect.

But that didn’t mean that Hide was stupid enough to not see what was going down with his best friend’s life. Something bigger than what existed between them snapped Kaneki. He texted him, he left a note with some comfort food by his apartment but in the back of his mind Hide knew. Their lives would forever be changed because Nagachika Hideyoshi miscalculated. And it was huge mother of a one. So there went their plans on road tripping during their next semester break.

Now all Hide could do was offer the space Kaneki wanted. He could try out becoming a monk or something because he needed a whole life’s worth of knowledge to figure out what to do with life and its tendency to making him its bitch. Hell, maybe it was time to renew his library card and start reading some self-help books and try to sort out why everything was starting to get shitty and maybe learn how to laugh more honestly when someone made a bad joke that even he couldn’t laugh at. Still, it left him pretty much hollow with the way his schedule was embarrassingly constructed to spending like ninety percent time with Kaneki. It wasn’t like he was antisocial; Hide was just more comfortable with living a life knowing Kaneki was safe and happy to be his friend.

  
That wasn't weird.

Nagachika Hideyoshi was just being a good friend. He was doing everything that was instilled in him from the friendship code. But that still didn’t stop him from mopping and creating pros and cons charts of when to actually bug Kaneki. It wasn’t like he wanted to be a shitty friend; he was well versed on Kaneki and bubble that even Hide couldn’t pop. After all, some of the most basic parts of being a good friend meant that people have to understand the undertones and signals everyone spoke. There were the ones that said everything in a cut throat fashion, the verbally soft spoken (that hardly had a spine and were all about body languages) and the crypts.

There were obviously more types but Hide didn’t really feel like sharing his wisdom; it would make him less appealing if he was going to be honest. There was this persona of sorts that Hide masterfully created over the years that he didn’t want to destroy it because he ran out of things to talk about with strangers. Plus, nobody like the overly presumptuous know-it-alls; it wasn’t attractive. (Hide knew from experience.) No, all what he saw was humanity as a whole was bargaining everything. Just like being a good friend. See how everything was starting to connect. Being able to read others was definitely a good life skill, just as much as it was to knowing how to haggle the world and its rules.

Even if it was widely known that a lair would burn, that didn’t stop people from lying. There were boundaries that took place of honesty, like snitches would find trouble and those the goody two shoes would always be alienated. For the price of telling the truth it looked like Hide would suffer; he had the ropes already formed around his neck when he introduced himself to Kaneki. The world had already spoke to him by then. And it looked like Kaneki was well acquainted too the way he shifted in uncertainty when Hide spoke to him.

It was odd back then when his vision was slightly distorted. He wasn’t jaded back then, but then again he couldn’t have explained it all that well that he knew that world was fucked up. He still had dreams, aspirations and Kaneki lit up his life. Had childhood always been so calm? No. Adolescence wasn’t a piece of cake either. It was shit time though.

But if he had to pick a time to go back then it would have been the summer before college started, when they were talking about apartments and budgets. Those were the easier days when Hide was in full bliss of moving forward with the world. He thought back then that life was finally respecting his wishes. That all the hours he spent on lying and misleading those in a higher corrupt power would hopefully take him into a path where he could escape trouble. He wrong; and Kaneki took the bullet. Now he was desperately trying to catch Kaneki’s attention before he left him for good.

So here lies Nagachika Hideyoshi; the opportunist that crumbled because he became overconfident. The rope around his neck burned but it couldn’t compare to the pain that Kaneki was probably feeling. His distance said that much. Just as much the way Hide ran so hard and clung to Kaneki when he caught him in campus. It was only for a couple of seconds, but when Hide held Kaneki, he almost felt his heart burst. The relief of seeing him alive was practically sending him into a heart attack. He was sure Kaneki noticed how much he meant to him.

But if he didn’t, then it was Hide’s job to see to it that Kaneki Ken would realize that the shitty world they were born in didn’t have to be that shitty. Not when his best friend was Nagachika Hideyoshi. He had promised once upon a time that he would protect and accept Kaneki for all his faults and quirks that made him his own person. That he would stick by side forever. Hide wasn’t a saint, he talked like a sailor, told lies and pretended to be out of battery when he texted other cluster of people in his life but, when it came down to Kaneki…Hide was willing to ride or die with him. It was that simple.

Being sent to hell was worth the chance to live in a life where he met Kaneki. It was a little unsettling in the beginning of their friendship but Hide got over it quickly. It was easy to when Hide managed to make him laugh the first time or when Kaneki went into excited mood for books. Their friendship was weird that way; constructed by the world giving loopholes and random chances of laughing from simple pleasures. An eternity of staying close to Kaneki would have been the best solution after death. But the matter of fact was Hide and Kaneki’s lives were balancing in a very unstable line.

Hide was pushed away; practically losing his footing and watching Kaneki walking away with his back turned. His silhouette grew by the amount of times he barricaded his bubble. It was scary and it made Hide shiver from the possibilities of Kaneki leaving him and never coming back. It was too probable, it was making him reckless and Hide was sure that life was catching a whiff of his mistakes. It was only a matter of time before Hide would find himself alone.

And he was not a happy camper. Not one bit. It was a good thing Hide never stayed down for long; he was fighter. And for Kaneki, he would punch life in the balls if he could physically. But metaphorically is fine too.

**Author's Note:**

> When will my sons be reunited again?! I just want them to have a long talk and live happily ever.


End file.
